WEBVTT 00:00:00.140 --> 00:00:03.260 I'm going to invite you to the book of Colossians 2. 00:00:03.280 --> 00:00:04.170 This is we're going to be today. 00:00:05.360 --> 00:00:12.560 Here's my hope and prayer for us, as we've had opportunities to sing music in worship to the Lord, as we open up the text of God's 00:00:12.560 --> 00:00:14.500 word, I pray our hearts continue in worship. 00:00:15.500 --> 00:00:22.540 Colossians 1 and 2, these portions of scripture, there is no more powerful text that 00:00:22.820 --> 00:00:29.900 concisely communicates the significance of Jesus in theological terms for us to grasp as a church. 00:00:30.140 --> 00:00:37.240 These are the foundational points for us as the body of believers in what it means to pursue Jesus, which is why I really would encourage our 00:00:37.240 --> 00:00:39.540 hearts to continue to worship as we look at this text. 00:00:40.180 --> 00:00:46.860 I would encourage you to open up to chapter 2 and follow along with this text together, because we're going to skim through this whole chapter today. 00:00:47.600 --> 00:00:49.840 I'm going to point out some very important parts of this chapter. 00:00:50.020 --> 00:00:57.160 There will be a lot of information —it's going to be opening up the fire hose this morning and you're going to drink deep, as much as you can gather as 00:00:57.160 --> 00:00:57.880 we're going along. 00:00:57.940 --> 00:01:05.110 If there's anything I say that I don't dive deeply enough into or something you want to check later, make a note for yourself, study it beyond this, 00:01:05.140 --> 00:01:05.900 ask me. 00:01:06.240 --> 00:01:08.860 We have those opportunities available for you. 00:01:08.900 --> 00:01:10.860 We always would encourage us to continue to grow. 00:01:11.040 --> 00:01:13.850 God tells us to love him with all of our mind. 00:01:14.400 --> 00:01:16.740 So we want to encourage questions and growth in the Lord. 00:01:16.800 --> 00:01:19.800 If there's something that you're unfamiliar with, please ask. 00:01:20.000 --> 00:01:22.400 We want to always encourage that. 00:01:23.780 --> 00:01:31.000 Colossians 2 for us, just so you know, this text breaks down, Paul is now going to defend the statement that he made in Colossians 00:01:31.000 --> 00:01:34.840 1:13 and on—we looked at this last week. 00:01:35.800 --> 00:01:42.520 This is a creedal statement, a hymn of the early church that they would sing acknowledge the significance of who Jesus is. 00:01:42.940 --> 00:01:44.880 It is what they stood for. 00:01:45.420 --> 00:01:52.660 This statement is jam-packed full of understanding the significance of Christ and our relationship 00:01:52.720 --> 00:01:55.320 to him and everything that Jesus is for us. 00:01:56.180 --> 00:02:02.000 Religion has the tendency to say, or religion will, undermine the authority of who Christ is. 00:02:02.060 --> 00:02:09.259 It has this thought with it: that Jesus isn't enough, and so we need to make up the difference, so we invent religion to sort of make up where 00:02:09.259 --> 00:02:10.810 Jesus falls short. 00:02:11.480 --> 00:02:17.700 But what we find in the book of Colossians 1, is the Bible communicates to us, Jesus is enough. 00:02:18.260 --> 00:02:19.510 Paul sets out the creed. 00:02:19.860 --> 00:02:27.780 This word for "creed" is a Latin word for, "I believe." This statement of "I believe" starts in Colossians 1:13, and 00:02:27.780 --> 00:02:29.400 it carries on into chapter 2. 00:02:30.180 --> 00:02:37.300 Now in chapter 2, he makes a defense for why he believes what he believes, or why Christians should believe what 00:02:37.300 --> 00:02:38.820 they believe about Jesus. 00:02:39.280 --> 00:02:46.520 A very interesting text for us this morning–the pinnacle of it we're going to see in verse 8 as Paul lays out the before and after of what is significant 00:02:46.620 --> 00:02:48.960 as it relates to our faith in Jesus. 00:02:50.580 --> 00:02:57.680 For me, coming to Christ, impacted my life in such a way that there was a radical transformation 00:02:57.680 --> 00:03:01.780 in who I was before Jesus and who I am now in Christ. 00:03:01.980 --> 00:03:09.020 Not to say that I am perfect, but God is certainly redeemed my heart, transformed my life and gave me a new 00:03:09.940 --> 00:03:13.060 perspective on the point of what life is about in him. 00:03:14.000 --> 00:03:21.340 One of the things that happen very early on as I started to skeptically study Jesus and then I put my faith in Christ, is I came to these types 00:03:21.420 --> 00:03:23.510 of books that made a defense of Jesus. 00:03:24.460 --> 00:03:31.760 To be quite frank, before I became a believer, the things that turn me off about Jesus were people that claimed to know Jesus. 00:03:33.780 --> 00:03:40.200 So I sort of based Jesus off what I considered just foolishness and thought, I want nothing to do with Jesus. 00:03:40.900 --> 00:03:48.180 As I started to really research Jesus and come to understand the biblical Jesus, I realize 00:03:48.180 --> 00:03:54.770 when it came to faith specifically in Christ, there was a solid foundation in who Jesus was. 00:03:55.420 --> 00:03:58.570 So I started to really gravitate towards apologetic books. 00:03:59.300 --> 00:04:06.300 Books like, Evidence That Demands a Verdict by Josh McDowell, which we give a little booklet on him when you visit our church for the first time, it's 00:04:06.380 --> 00:04:07.530 called More Than a Carpenter. 00:04:08.020 --> 00:04:10.860 If you got ripped off and didn't get that book, let me know and we'll make sure you get it. 00:04:12.770 --> 00:04:20.220 There was a man by the name of Chuck Colson, who it was a part of Watergate who coincidentally 00:04:20.220 --> 00:04:27.460 enough, God use Watergate to bring him to Jesus because he realized that 12 most prominent men in American history couldn't keep a lie together for 00:04:27.460 --> 00:04:34.900 a couple of days, but the 12 disciples did it for their entire lives, only it wasn't a lie, with validated the truth of who 00:04:35.040 --> 00:04:36.320 Jesus was to them. 00:04:36.420 --> 00:04:42.120 So Chuck Colson, in understanding that story and reading about the disciples, wrote a defense of Christianity. 00:04:42.620 --> 00:04:48.440 When I came to know Jesus, there was this book coming out by a man named Lee Strobel, who was a skeptic himself. 00:04:48.480 --> 00:04:49.700 His wife became a Christian. 00:04:49.740 --> 00:04:54.250 He was an investigative journalist and so he went on this journey of investigating Christianity. 00:04:54.340 --> 00:04:56.950 He wanted to really just disprove it because he didn't want his wife to be a Christian. 00:04:57.620 --> 00:05:01.590 He ends up becoming a Christian, and in his journey he writes a book called The Case for Faith. 00:05:02.380 --> 00:05:06.780 When this book first came out, there was also an audio CD that came with it. 00:05:06.820 --> 00:05:08.540 I tried to find it this week, but I couldn't find it. 00:05:08.960 --> 00:05:11.200 On it he interviews a man named Charles Templeton. 00:05:12.100 --> 00:05:19.160 An interesting thing about Templeton is that in his younger years and into young adulthood, he claimed to be a follower of Jesus 00:05:19.160 --> 00:05:26.630 and then he walked away from the faith and became a prominent atheist, broadcasting against Christianity. 00:05:27.980 --> 00:05:32.860 Lee Strobel had the opportunity to interview him, I believe he was living in Canada at the time. 00:05:33.820 --> 00:05:40.430 It was later in his life, he was in his eighties, and this interview took place just a couple of years before his death. 00:05:40.940 --> 00:05:43.480 He wasn't doing public interviews anymore. 00:05:43.500 --> 00:05:48.640 He had recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer's, and so he had tucked away from public life. 00:05:49.500 --> 00:05:56.790 But Lee Strobel had this opportunity to interview him about why he walked away from the faith, what he thought about Christianity, 00:05:57.460 --> 00:05:59.880 and then he gets this point of in the interview where you asks him about Jesus. 00:06:01.620 --> 00:06:08.780 When Lee Strobel gives his introduction to his question about Jesus to Charles Templeton, he said he was hesitant to 00:06:08.860 --> 00:06:16.020 do it because he want to prod further questions to Templeton, but he knew Templeton's health was frail and so he felt the need to press 00:06:16.020 --> 00:06:16.850 this interview further. 00:06:17.100 --> 00:06:24.640 So he asked him about Jesus knowing this could end the interview, but here is Charles Templeton in his eighties staring 00:06:24.640 --> 00:06:27.360 at his Maker very soon in the future. 00:06:27.660 --> 00:06:30.870 He has Alzheimer's, he knows he's getting to the end of his life. 00:06:31.140 --> 00:06:34.900 This is what he says, when Lee Strobel asks him about Jesus, this is his remarks. 00:06:36.000 --> 00:06:41.360 I've cut this down—he goes much further into the beauty of who Christ is in this statement, but let me just read you some excerpts. 00:06:41.700 --> 00:06:45.180 He says, "He was the greatest human being who has ever lived. 00:06:46.040 --> 00:06:51.340 Everything good I know, everything decent I know, everything pure I know, I learned from Jesus. 00:06:51.760 --> 00:06:53.020 Just look at Jesus. 00:06:53.300 --> 00:06:59.970 There's no question that he had the highest moral standard, the least duplicity, the greatest compassion of any human being in history. 00:07:00.260 --> 00:07:03.840 There have been many other wonderful people, but Jesus is Jesus. 00:07:04.640 --> 00:07:11.760 In my view," he declared, "he is the most important human being who has ever existed." That's 00:07:11.760 --> 00:07:18.920 when Templeton uttered the words, "I never expected to 00:07:19.000 --> 00:07:20.440 hear from him. 00:07:20.640 --> 00:07:28.660 If I may put it this way," and voice beginning to crack, "I miss him." 00:07:28.780 --> 00:07:30.340 And with that, tears flooded his eyes. 00:07:31.540 --> 00:07:35.660 He turned his head and looked downward, raising his left hand to shield his face from me. 00:07:36.040 --> 00:07:38.600 His shoulders bobbed as he wept. 00:07:40.600 --> 00:07:46.320 The significance of who Christ is the foundation of what Christianity is. 00:07:48.900 --> 00:07:51.590 Colossians 2 is the defense of that. 00:07:53.160 --> 00:07:56.480 Paul opens up this passage of scripture and I'm going to break it to us in chunks. 00:07:57.020 --> 00:08:04.380 In chapter 2, verses 1 to 3 he reveals to us the mystery and this is what he says, "For I want you to know how 00:08:04.380 --> 00:08:12.520 great a struggle I have on your behalf and for those who are at Laodicea and for all those who have not personally seen my face." So 00:08:12.600 --> 00:08:16.540 we said this in the beginning, when Paul wrote the book of Colossians, Paul didn't start this church. 00:08:17.860 --> 00:08:23.030 In fact, he started of the church of Ephesus, and a man by the name of Epaphras came from the city of Colosse. 00:08:23.700 --> 00:08:28.780 He had gone back to the city and shared the message that Paul had given him and this church was born. 00:08:29.470 --> 00:08:31.700 Paul says, you know I'm struggling for you here. 00:08:32.360 --> 00:08:33.570 And we looked at the reasoning why. 00:08:34.159 --> 00:08:41.320 It's because the significance of who Jesus is, the preeminence of Christ, the deity of Jesus, is under attack within 00:08:41.380 --> 00:08:42.039 the church. 00:08:42.080 --> 00:08:46.850 People are coming in and saying they're, "I'm a Christian too, but you're idea of Jesus isn't the right Jesus. 00:08:47.260 --> 00:08:54.560 Let me present to you some other persuasive arguments of Jesus is really and how you should embrace him." They are undermining the significance of Jesus. 00:08:54.880 --> 00:08:55.820 They're tearing him down. 00:08:55.900 --> 00:09:03.080 Paul is saying, "I'm struggling for you here, that their hearts may be encouraged having been knit together in love and obtained to the wealth that comes from 00:09:03.080 --> 00:09:10.220 the full assurance of understanding, resulting in a true knowledge of God's mystery, that is Christ himself in 00:09:10.260 --> 00:09:17.280 who are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." Paul is saying, look this mystery, these people in the church that are trying 00:09:17.280 --> 00:09:23.700 to pretend like there's more to this, or adding or taking away from Christ, listen: God's mystery has been revealed. 00:09:24.800 --> 00:09:30.680 People like to cling this word "mystery" in the New Testament, like there are these secret things of God that you don't know. 00:09:30.760 --> 00:09:38.140 But here's what I want you to know: when the Bible talks about the word "mystery," almost immediately, every time this word mystery is presented, he 00:09:38.140 --> 00:09:40.660 always says what that mystery is. 00:09:40.900 --> 00:09:45.380 So look, God's mystery, it's not something that's hidden from us like we don't know. 00:09:46.140 --> 00:09:48.580 God's mystery is Christ himself. 00:09:50.360 --> 00:09:53.820 The New Testament talks about mystery a couple of dozen times. 00:09:54.400 --> 00:09:59.900 Every time it talks about this mystery it is revealing to us what aspect of this mystery it's talking about. 00:10:00.820 --> 00:10:02.520 All of it relates to Jesus. 00:10:02.820 --> 00:10:06.210 In the Old Testament they didn't quite understand how it was going to work out specifically. 00:10:06.560 --> 00:10:12.140 They would declare God's plan: the Savior was coming, but in the New Testament we see specifically how it plays out. 00:10:12.860 --> 00:10:20.060 God comes in the flesh, dies for sinful man and brings together Jew and Gentile to enjoy God for all of eternity. 00:10:20.720 --> 00:10:27.900 Some aspect of that is discussed when God refers to this, or when the Bible refers to this as a mystery. 00:10:28.400 --> 00:10:30.200 But the mystery has been revealed. 00:10:30.420 --> 00:10:34.200 There is no secret the God is withholding from you. 00:10:34.860 --> 00:10:35.860 Jesus fulfills at all. 00:10:36.380 --> 00:10:43.460 In fact, when Paul wrote Romans and in chapter 16, this is what he said, "Now to him that has the power to establish you 00:10:43.460 --> 00:10:50.660 according to my gospel, in the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery which was kept secret since 00:10:50.660 --> 00:10:57.720 the world began, but now is made manifest and by the scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandments of the Everlasting 00:10:57.720 --> 00:11:04.820 God, made known to all the nations for the obedience of faith." There is not this 00:11:05.200 --> 00:11:12.280 hidden revelation, this "mystery" has been revealed in Christ, for you, bringing us to him to enjoy him for all of eternity. 00:11:14.380 --> 00:11:21.480 So Paul is saying this, your foundation, everything that we are is founded upon and in Jesus. 00:11:22.900 --> 00:11:30.220 So he says to us in verse 4 to 7 and let me just create these images in your mind of where we are going in 00:11:30.220 --> 00:11:31.140 Christ together. 00:11:31.700 --> 00:11:38.780 What Paul does is he draws on analogies from culture within these verses to explain to us what this 00:11:38.880 --> 00:11:39.620 journey is about. 00:11:39.740 --> 00:11:46.760 So he says this in verse 7, "I say this so that no one will delude you with persuasive arguments." This word for "persuasive arguments" 00:11:47.060 --> 00:11:48.080 is a legalistic term. 00:11:48.140 --> 00:11:52.860 It's something lawyers would use, so don't be persuaded by the lawyers. 00:11:52.980 --> 00:12:00.300 But in verse 5, "for even though I am absent in body, nevertheless, I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good discipline and stability 00:12:00.300 --> 00:12:07.360 of your faith in Christ." This word for discipline is for ranking in the military structure 00:12:07.440 --> 00:12:13.640 and so he saying, where you find yourself in Jesus and the stability is your formation in the army. 00:12:14.180 --> 00:12:21.240 Then in verse 16, he goes on and says, "therefore as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him." So if you're not in the military, maybe 00:12:21.240 --> 00:12:23.320 you're more of the pilgrim type. 00:12:23.660 --> 00:12:26.630 So he's describing it as a hippie-dippie pilgrimage. 00:12:26.860 --> 00:12:34.290 That goes on forever and in verse 7 he says, "having been firmly rooted and built up in him." so if you're this nature lover he saying, 00:12:34.520 --> 00:12:38.280 don't be the tumbleweed, but rather be the tree that goes deep into the ground. 00:12:38.360 --> 00:12:39.300 Hug the tree, right? 00:12:39.660 --> 00:12:46.720 So having been rooted and built up in him and established in him, this idea of being built up and established as 00:12:46.720 --> 00:12:48.680 this architectural term. 00:12:48.740 --> 00:12:54.940 God is working in his body to build you up into this beautiful structure in him, that is the church. 00:12:55.380 --> 00:13:02.600 So he says at the end, "just as you were instructed and overflowing with gratitude." This word of overflowing it is 00:13:02.820 --> 00:13:07.120 symbolically represented as this river pressing beyond its banks. 00:13:07.440 --> 00:13:11.840 That God, in you, through Christ, working out his plan for eternity. 00:13:11.840 --> 00:13:16.700 That mystery now being revealed it's like this well that just screams out of your life. 00:13:18.540 --> 00:13:19.940 In all of these pictures, Paul is grasping. 00:13:20.560 --> 00:13:27.800 He's just using these illustrations for your mind to grab hold up and the beauty of Jesus however you like to think whatever 00:13:27.800 --> 00:13:31.520 artistically that attracts you, grab hold of that. 00:13:31.540 --> 00:13:33.100 If you want to be a tree, be a tree. 00:13:33.400 --> 00:13:36.500 If you want to be a river, earth wind and fire, who cares? 00:13:36.520 --> 00:13:39.660 Just think about the significance of Jesus here. 00:13:39.840 --> 00:13:46.840 Paul is rooting us in that, so that he can get to this place and building his argument in verse 8, So if you 00:13:46.840 --> 00:13:53.120 think through this text for just a moment, in verse 8 he's going to set 2 arguments out for us. 00:13:54.600 --> 00:13:59.600 Verse 9 to 15, he's going to talk about one argument. 00:14:00.480 --> 00:14:04.010 Verse 16 to 23, he's going to present the other argument. 00:14:04.780 --> 00:14:11.800 So this is what he says in verse 8, "see to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy 00:14:11.860 --> 00:14:18.860 and empty deception, according to the traditions of men, according to the elementary principles of the 00:14:18.860 --> 00:14:24.660 world, rather than according to Christ." I'm going to tell you what Paul is doing here. 00:14:26.160 --> 00:14:34.200 You're really going to see this as verses play out, but he's really taking every religious system of thinking in this world and he's positioning it 00:14:34.200 --> 00:14:36.760 against Jesus. 00:14:37.820 --> 00:14:44.960 And he's saying to us, "choose Jesus." So he says, listen these religious thinkings in life will take you 00:14:44.960 --> 00:14:45.340 captive. 00:14:46.680 --> 00:14:51.270 Here's where they come from: men make them up because they don't see the sufficiency of Jesus. 00:14:52.740 --> 00:14:54.030 So they undermine Jesus. 00:14:54.880 --> 00:14:59.720 And because they don't see the sufficiency of Jesus, they create their own legalistic rules. 00:15:01.080 --> 00:15:04.860 And here's what happens within that: we start worshipping the elementary principles of the world. 00:15:04.860 --> 00:15:07.970 These things of the world we add as more significant than Christ. 00:15:08.660 --> 00:15:13.760 He's saying that rather than pursue those things, see the importance of who Jesus is. 00:15:14.280 --> 00:15:19.160 Don't allow yourself to be taken captive, but here's the answer: Jesus. 00:15:20.660 --> 00:15:27.960 So as Paula presents this argument he reminds us again in verses 9 to 15, exactly who Jesus is, 00:15:28.320 --> 00:15:29.380 what he's done for us. 00:15:30.040 --> 00:15:33.880 He repeats a statement for us that he's already stated in chapter 1 verse 15. 00:15:34.900 --> 00:15:41.940 So he says this, "for in him," talking about Christ, "all the fullness of diety dwells in bodily form." 00:15:43.220 --> 00:15:45.700 Jesus, literally, is God in the flesh. 00:15:45.820 --> 00:15:49.680 This word for fullness means the sum total of God. 00:15:51.060 --> 00:15:52.500 God became flesh. 00:15:53.500 --> 00:15:56.020 If you want to know what God is like, look at Jesus. 00:15:57.320 --> 00:16:04.640 This is why Jesus said, "he who has seen me has seen the Father." Jesus 00:16:05.280 --> 00:16:08.940 became flesh as God dwelling among us. 00:16:09.080 --> 00:16:10.380 The fullness is with him. 00:16:10.620 --> 00:16:17.900 So it says this in verse 10, "and in him you have been made complete." Everything we need as human 00:16:17.900 --> 00:16:22.320 beings, everything we're created for, everything that life is about. 00:16:22.700 --> 00:16:27.520 In Jesus there is sufficiency in him because, in Him, you have been made complete. 00:16:28.120 --> 00:16:35.740 So it says this, "therefore because we're completing in Jesus, he is the head over all rule and authority." Verse 11, 00:16:35.740 --> 00:16:42.780 "and in him you were also circumcised with the circumcision made without human hands, by the removal the body, the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ." 00:16:43.160 --> 00:16:46.110 Now, let me say what this says and I want talk about how weird this is for a minute. 00:16:46.860 --> 00:16:53.900 Religiously, we like to do things externally to 00:16:53.900 --> 00:16:55.980 avail ourselves to God. 00:16:57.220 --> 00:16:57.720 Prove our worth. 00:16:59.920 --> 00:17:06.560 What it is saying in verse 11: what really needs to take place isn't what happens externally. 00:17:07.420 --> 00:17:10.630 What really needs to take place in our lives happens in our heart. 00:17:11.720 --> 00:17:15.490 God needs to redeem our heart that's where the wickedness is. 00:17:16.819 --> 00:17:23.880 You can go through your whole life not killing, not stealing, not committing adultery, not whatever rules 00:17:23.880 --> 00:17:24.540 you want to make. 00:17:24.540 --> 00:17:31.800 You can go through your whole life and do that, but here's what Jesus said about it: so even you might not have killed, you may have been angry at someone and that's 00:17:31.800 --> 00:17:33.460 where murder comes from. 00:17:33.800 --> 00:17:40.880 And you may not have committed adultery or you haven't stolen from someone, but you've lusted in your heart and you've coveted it in your 00:17:40.880 --> 00:17:41.080 heart. 00:17:43.000 --> 00:17:44.360 That's what really needs addressed. 00:17:46.380 --> 00:17:49.280 We're all sinful human beings before a holy God. 00:17:50.080 --> 00:17:51.900 We need redemption in that. 00:17:53.560 --> 00:18:02.440 The Bible uses this weird word of "circumcision", which brings up an interesting point I want to say to you this morning, when it comes to Jesus: apart 00:18:02.440 --> 00:18:06.410 from the grace of God and the Spirit of God working in our lives, Christians what you believe is weird. 00:18:08.920 --> 00:18:15.970 You believe God becomes flesh, God dies for you, gives his life for you, and loves you unconditionally, 00:18:17.000 --> 00:18:20.530 despite sin, so that you can enjoy eternity with him forever. 00:18:20.600 --> 00:18:22.080 That's weird. 00:18:22.100 --> 00:18:26.720 Could you imagine you called up your friends and just say, "Hey, let's all get together. 00:18:26.740 --> 00:18:28.840 I want to talk to you about something that's happen in my life. 00:18:29.220 --> 00:18:32.080 You guys come over, we're going to sit down around the table. 00:18:32.140 --> 00:18:33.420 I just want to share with you circumcision. 00:18:35.720 --> 00:18:40.080 Let's have some talks about circumcision! 00:18:40.340 --> 00:18:42.560 No thank you! 00:18:42.900 --> 00:18:45.480 That's really not what I want to do with my day today. 00:18:45.540 --> 00:18:47.470 I've got watch some grass grow or something. 00:18:47.820 --> 00:18:55.040 This whole circumcision thing–I'm not going to gather around my kitchen table and have this sort of discussion." But Paul goes on a little further and says this, "Having been buried 00:18:55.180 --> 00:19:02.050 with him in baptism in which you were also raised up with him through faith in the working of God, who raised from the dead. 00:19:03.560 --> 00:19:10.620 When you were dead in your transgressions and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, he made you alive together with him, having forgiven 00:19:10.620 --> 00:19:17.660 us all of our transgressions, having cancelled out the certificate of debt consisting of degrees 00:19:17.660 --> 00:19:23.900 against us, which was hostile to us, and he has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. 00:19:24.500 --> 00:19:32.620 When he had disarmed the rulers and authorities he made a public display of them, having triumph over them, through him. 00:19:32.640 --> 00:19:40.280 Verse 15 is somewhat important and I'm going to scare the snot out of all of us at the end, a little bit I think, but I want you to just think about this: according 00:19:40.280 --> 00:19:47.560 to scripture this is what it says, "there is the spiritual realm, God, and 00:19:47.680 --> 00:19:50.880 the Devil representing the opposite, the kingdom of darkness. 00:19:51.940 --> 00:19:58.990 What Jesus is saying in representing what is pure, what is good, what is holy, he disarms what is darkness, what is ungood, what is hostile. 00:19:59.740 --> 00:20:01.420 In verse 14 he describe how this happens. 00:20:01.780 --> 00:20:08.450 Paul is using another illustration here that we don't quite get in English, but during the time of Paul paper was expensive. 00:20:09.080 --> 00:20:10.510 You had to be wealthy to own paper. 00:20:11.700 --> 00:20:18.700 Whenever any legal document was written, like a receipt, they didn't always do this, but because paper was so expensive, they 00:20:18.700 --> 00:20:19.500 liked to recycle it. 00:20:19.800 --> 00:20:23.680 When there was a debt and it was recorded on a receipt, like your home mortgage or whatever you've got a pay? 00:20:24.040 --> 00:20:31.140 When that bad boy was paid off and you're excited to grab the deed to your home and say, "get lost bank." Then you'd take that deed and you would present it 00:20:31.140 --> 00:20:34.960 as having been paid off and they would take the parchment would literally wash it. 00:20:35.210 --> 00:20:36.560 I guess the ink was no good. 00:20:36.640 --> 00:20:42.740 They would just dunk it and clean off the ink so they could recycle that because paper was expensive and it took time to do that. 00:20:42.960 --> 00:20:50.440 So when it's talking about Jesus canceling your debt against God, your sin against the Lord, that's what it's saying: Jesus by his blood, he 00:20:50.600 --> 00:20:52.950 has dipped it in his blood, he's washed the parchment clean. 00:20:53.320 --> 00:20:56.690 So when God looks at you he sees the purity of who Christ is. 00:20:58.220 --> 00:21:05.380 Now, apart from the grace of God, saying God came became flesh, died for our sins that we may enjoy eternity 00:21:05.380 --> 00:21:09.970 with him forever, it's not an easy pill to swallow. 00:21:10.780 --> 00:21:16.650 Or to think about until, I think, the grace of God begins to work on our lives and reveal this to us. 00:21:16.900 --> 00:21:23.200 But for us and to our benefit, this is where I found myself years ago as is related to Jesus. 00:21:23.800 --> 00:21:31.230 Wanting to doubt, wanting to throw things at Christ, to disprove him, and here is one of the beautiful ways the grace of God has worked for us as people, 00:21:31.580 --> 00:21:38.960 that if you really cared enough, there is enough verifiable fact related to Jesus for you to look at him historically with certainty 00:21:39.420 --> 00:21:44.680 and to declare this very statement that Paul is making about Christ in Colossians 2. 00:21:46.500 --> 00:21:53.620 I'm just going to give you a few of them this morning and if something is challenging you personally as it relates to Jesus, this 00:21:53.660 --> 00:21:56.180 help you find a place to rest in him as sufficient. 00:21:56.900 --> 00:22:03.940 If you know someone that is challenging Jesus and questioning where he is, this will help 00:22:04.120 --> 00:22:09.580 you in sharing with them how the sufficiency of Christ is made known to us in our lives. 00:22:09.680 --> 00:22:15.110 Were it really becomes real is you simply exercising your faith in what Jesus has declared. 00:22:17.340 --> 00:22:21.800 Sometimes we have questions we skeptically asked about Jesus, but sometimes we don't really take the time to answer them. 00:22:21.860 --> 00:22:24.650 Let me just ask a few of them for us this morning. 00:22:26.040 --> 00:22:33.060 Sometimes I've heard this from people wanting to deny Jesus: when we say he's God become flesh, they might say 00:22:33.060 --> 00:22:37.460 to us that Jesus was taught to be God over time. 00:22:37.600 --> 00:22:44.620 Meaning, the Bible came a little bit later so after Jesus had died then some sort 00:22:44.620 --> 00:22:49.980 of mysticism came into that and romanticized Jesus and he was declared deity after that. 00:22:50.600 --> 00:22:55.260 To which I would say, when you study that historically, it really doesn't hold any water. 00:22:55.700 --> 00:23:00.460 The New Testament started to be written around 45 A.D. 00:23:00.960 --> 00:23:02.300 Jesus was crucified around 33 A.D. 00:23:02.720 --> 00:23:06.520 So within just over a decade the Bible starts to be written. 00:23:07.240 --> 00:23:13.280 It's written by the individuals that walked with Jesus, so I'll ask a question about them and they're vality in just a minute. 00:23:13.760 --> 00:23:20.780 But to romanticize Jesus and to mystically proclaim him something beyond what he was, you 00:23:20.820 --> 00:23:24.040 really don't have time for those legends to build, because Scripture was written. 00:23:24.680 --> 00:23:30.820 But even before the New Testament was written, when you go back to the Old Testament, you see Jesus declared as diety. 00:23:31.000 --> 00:23:33.980 There's multiple places to point to in scripture. 00:23:34.620 --> 00:23:42.120 One that I love to is from the book of Isaiah, because we have copies of the book of Isaiah hundreds of years older 00:23:42.120 --> 00:23:44.440 than Jesus himself in the Dead Sea Scrolls. 00:23:45.020 --> 00:23:52.340 When you read those portions of scripture in Isaiah 7 and Isaiah 9 when it talks about the deity of Jesus, this is what it says, talking 00:23:52.340 --> 00:23:58.380 about Mary and prophetically stating about Jesus, "therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. 00:23:59.300 --> 00:24:06.500 Behold, a virgin will be with child and bear a son and she will call his name Immanuel." Immanuel being translated 00:24:06.500 --> 00:24:09.340 literally means God with us. 00:24:09.620 --> 00:24:10.440 God in the flesh. 00:24:10.560 --> 00:24:17.600 When you read the book of John in the beginning, that's how it declares itself that God was with God, God was God and God became flesh and 00:24:17.680 --> 00:24:18.280 dwelt among us. 00:24:18.600 --> 00:24:25.960 In Isaiah 9:6, the way this passage translates if you look every time there's a comma, until 00:24:25.960 --> 00:24:33.140 you get to the end, it's saying Gods relationship to man and God and his identity 00:24:33.140 --> 00:24:34.000 as deity. 00:24:34.140 --> 00:24:38.990 So look at this: "for a child will be born to us." This is talking about physically man. 00:24:40.300 --> 00:24:47.520 "A son will be given to us," so at the same time the child is born by woman he's also given to us, meaning he has the claim 00:24:47.520 --> 00:24:48.260 of deity. 00:24:48.780 --> 00:24:55.840 "And the government will rest on his shoulders." This is talking about physically ruling in the world, and then look what it says about Jesus: 00:24:55.840 --> 00:25:03.560 "and his name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace." 00:25:03.960 --> 00:25:06.320 Jesus is called the Father in the Old Testament. 00:25:06.880 --> 00:25:09.700 Jesus is called Mighty God in the Old Testament. 00:25:09.860 --> 00:25:16.900 So this idea that Jesus was claimed to be God later doesn't hold any water, because we have copies of the book of Isaiah which claims the 00:25:16.960 --> 00:25:19.660 deity of Jesus hundreds of years before Jesus existed. 00:25:21.330 --> 00:25:26.580 Jesus, sometimes it's said, was just a fable over time. 00:25:26.580 --> 00:25:27.540 Maybe you've heard of this. 00:25:27.820 --> 00:25:34.820 People will say that there are gods around the time of Jesus, or a little before Jesus, of which the 00:25:34.820 --> 00:25:37.290 story of Jesus was fabricated from. 00:25:37.920 --> 00:25:45.340 There were gods named Mithras and Horus and a few others, and they'll say what really happened in this area of 00:25:45.340 --> 00:25:50.940 Jerusalem, they took the stories of these other gods in the area and made the story of Jesus. 00:25:51.280 --> 00:25:56.100 They say when you read the story these other gods, you can see how they would formulate the story of Jesus. 00:25:57.400 --> 00:26:05.860 That became really popular in the book written by Dan Brown, The DaVinci Code, and it was started first 00:26:05.860 --> 00:26:09.180 century, not second century, not third century, fourth century. 00:26:10.260 --> 00:26:13.340 It actually came in the 19th century by German philosophers. 00:26:13.900 --> 00:26:20.000 They started to propose this idea, having studied different gods in the Roman Empire. 00:26:20.480 --> 00:26:24.380 They said that when it realated to Jesus, they formulate these ideas of Christ from these other gods. 00:26:25.080 --> 00:26:27.200 But there's a couple of problems with that. 00:26:27.880 --> 00:26:34.880 The first is, if that were true and it was so obvious, you would expect some point in the first ten centuries 00:26:34.880 --> 00:26:37.240 for someone else to say it, right? 00:26:37.360 --> 00:26:44.380 But no one else makes that claim because if it didn't hold any water and no one would have thought that it held any water 00:26:44.780 --> 00:26:45.980 within the first few centuries. 00:26:46.560 --> 00:26:47.970 Which brings me to the second problem. 00:26:48.540 --> 00:26:55.620 When you read German claims, when you read The DaVinci Code claims that these stories about Jesus were stolen from these other gods and you actually read the stories about these 00:26:55.640 --> 00:27:01.860 other gods, you seeing nothing that symbolically represent Jesus in any way. 00:27:02.420 --> 00:27:09.030 To take these stories and say that they developed the story of Jesus off that, you have to be on some sort of trip. 00:27:10.480 --> 00:27:11.840 It is so far out beyond! 00:27:12.200 --> 00:27:15.810 The only thing out of all these stories, and I've read them because I was a skeptic myself. 00:27:16.100 --> 00:27:22.300 The only thing in this stories that remotely comes close to identifying something related to Jesus is the god Mithras. 00:27:23.260 --> 00:27:30.320 He was claimed to have been born on December 25th, which by the way, isn't Jesus's real birthday to begin with. 00:27:30.620 --> 00:27:33.210 It's just the day that the church selected in order to honor Jesus. 00:27:33.720 --> 00:27:37.080 I think it was because pagan gods were honored on this day. 00:27:37.220 --> 00:27:43.600 Christianity gave such a rise that they want to eliminate these pagan gods and wanted to honor Jesus and picked a day on the calendar year to celebrate the birth of Christ. 00:27:43.900 --> 00:27:45.700 Which we call December 25th. 00:27:45.700 --> 00:27:52.460 Which, by the way, historically around the world the Christian church, not every Christian church around the world celebrates December 25th as Jesus's birthday. 00:27:53.120 --> 00:27:55.920 Some of them celebrate it, believe it or not, in January. 00:27:55.920 --> 00:28:01.820 So this idea of these gods even coming close to Jesus — it holds no water. 00:28:01.980 --> 00:28:06.620 When you hear someone question that, you know they've never even researched that. 00:28:06.700 --> 00:28:09.160 They've only really just questioned it. 00:28:09.260 --> 00:28:12.300 Because when you study it, when you dive into it doesn't hold any water. 00:28:12.760 --> 00:28:20.020 And lastly, what I want to say is this: really all that we believe hinges upon whether or not Jesus was resurrected from 00:28:20.020 --> 00:28:20.600 the grave. 00:28:21.260 --> 00:28:22.840 He was in this tomb for three days. 00:28:23.120 --> 00:28:28.020 Did Jesus really resurrect from the grave or did the disciples just make this up? 00:28:29.760 --> 00:28:35.500 When you read the New Testament, you read Luke 1:2. 00:28:36.440 --> 00:28:40.400 Luke was sent to investigate Christianity. 00:28:40.560 --> 00:28:42.180 He was paid for by his belief. 00:28:42.440 --> 00:28:49.430 Theophilus paid Luke to journey around the world and document the gospels, document the book of Acts, and what was happening Christianity. 00:28:50.180 --> 00:28:52.040 It is believed that Theophilus was a wealthy individual. 00:28:52.760 --> 00:28:59.980 Luke was a Godly doctor and so knowing he paided with a very close attention to detail, he sent Luke out to 00:28:59.980 --> 00:29:01.920 write the story of Jesus. 00:29:02.720 --> 00:29:09.760 Luke traveled with Paul and he gets this gospel story doing ministry with Paul. 00:29:09.920 --> 00:29:16.920 But when Luke starts the Gospel of Luke, which was the very first writing he is given to, he says this, he write the accounts 00:29:16.920 --> 00:29:19.280 of Jesus from eyewitnesses. 00:29:20.900 --> 00:29:27.900 When Paul writes 1st Corinthians 15, he shares the gospel and then he goes on to list the 00:29:27.900 --> 00:29:31.880 individuals Jesus appear to after his resurrection. 00:29:32.160 --> 00:29:36.240 He even says at one point, Jesus appeared to 500 people at one time. 00:29:36.900 --> 00:29:41.540 The point of that is this: in the first century, Christianity spread so rapidly, it's unbelievable. 00:29:41.960 --> 00:29:49.600 But when the writers are writing these documents, what they're saying is, if you don't believe me, people are still walking having seen the resurrected Jesus. 00:29:50.200 --> 00:29:57.440 And when Paul says he appeared to 500 people one time, what Paul is saying is that it might be possible for one person 00:29:57.440 --> 00:30:04.900 to just go a little crazy and say, "I saw Jesus!" It might be possible for ten people to say, "We all saw Jesus!" But 500 00:30:04.900 --> 00:30:12.340 people gathered together at one time trying to come up with some sort of make Believe story that they saw Jesus becomes a bit ridiculous. 00:30:13.220 --> 00:30:18.480 Especially when you consider the expense these individuals are going to pay because their faith in Christ. 00:30:20.080 --> 00:30:25.370 When you look at the disciples, the early disciples died. 00:30:25.540 --> 00:30:32.760 Jesus's 11, apart from Judas who was 12th, Jesus's 11 disciples died thousands of miles apart 00:30:32.760 --> 00:30:33.520 from one another. 00:30:34.840 --> 00:30:38.280 Bartholomew is flayed alive in Armenia. 00:30:39.340 --> 00:30:41.450 Andrew is crucified in Greece. 00:30:42.380 --> 00:30:46.640 Matthew gives up his life for Christ in Ethiopia. 00:30:47.220 --> 00:30:48.720 Paul is beheaded in Rome. 00:30:49.220 --> 00:30:56.320 These individual spreading all over the globe, thousands of miles apart, get no accommodations for this and continue 00:30:56.320 --> 00:30:57.580 to give their lives for Christ. 00:30:57.740 --> 00:31:04.900 Now, when it comes to religious ideology, we know there are plenty of people who will give up their lives 00:31:04.900 --> 00:31:07.140 for some ideology related to some god. 00:31:07.580 --> 00:31:09.160 People just getting emphatically nuts. 00:31:09.400 --> 00:31:10.710 We've seen that in American history. 00:31:11.100 --> 00:31:13.300 We see that across the globe in the last 10 years. 00:31:14.300 --> 00:31:21.300 The disciples didn't give up their lives or kill other people giving up their lives for this ideology. 00:31:22.320 --> 00:31:26.000 You remember, when it relates to their lives, when you read the gospel about the disciples. 00:31:27.360 --> 00:31:34.940 If you're going to talk about this religious belief that you want to tout yourself in, on of the things are certainly going to do when you write this holy 00:31:34.940 --> 00:31:38.080 book, is you're going to make yourself look a little bit good in it. 00:31:38.780 --> 00:31:46.000 When you read the gospels, what you see about these disciples is that the only one that continues to get the identity of Jesus right 00:31:46.000 --> 00:31:47.360 is the demons. 00:31:48.520 --> 00:31:49.100 Come on guys! 00:31:49.120 --> 00:31:50.900 You're hanging out with Jesus for 3 years here. 00:31:51.180 --> 00:31:56.700 You guys continue to get it wrong, moment after moment, and it's the demons that come before Jesus to pronounce the goodness of who Christ is. 00:31:57.780 --> 00:32:02.120 Even to the point that when Jesus was crucified, the disciples are the ones that are cowards running away. 00:32:02.840 --> 00:32:10.100 If you're going to make up a faith and write something about it, you probably as a leader for this faith, want of make yourself look a little bit good.These 00:32:10.100 --> 00:32:12.100 disciples didn't do that. 00:32:12.100 --> 00:32:14.610 Nor do they give up their lives for a religious ideology. 00:32:16.880 --> 00:32:21.160 The reason disciples gave their lives for Christ was a fact. 00:32:22.520 --> 00:32:24.800 The fact was something that they could not deny. 00:32:25.680 --> 00:32:32.960 Because as you read the end of the gospels, what you see in the lives of these disciples, as they are cowards running away, something happens within 00:32:32.960 --> 00:32:35.740 them where everything changes in a moment. 00:32:36.020 --> 00:32:36.340 What is it? 00:32:38.140 --> 00:32:39.240 It's the resurrection of Christ. 00:32:41.640 --> 00:32:42.520 They couldn't deny it. 00:32:44.920 --> 00:32:46.800 A dead man was walking. 00:32:49.440 --> 00:32:52.960 Jesus is who he said he was. 00:32:54.900 --> 00:33:02.020 I can imagine the disciples when they heard Jesus say to the religious leaders, "destroy this temple and in three days I will build it again." When Jesus said 00:33:02.020 --> 00:33:04.130 that, they were probably wondering what is this man talking about? 00:33:04.600 --> 00:33:05.960 This is crazy. 00:33:06.280 --> 00:33:08.660 How is going to build it 3 days later after he dies. 00:33:08.900 --> 00:33:10.440 Finally they realize, wait a minute. 00:33:12.520 --> 00:33:16.170 Jesus is dead, and now he is alive. 00:33:18.260 --> 00:33:25.380 On the day he died, a earthquake happened, it ripped temple 00:33:25.380 --> 00:33:32.880 veil, symbolize to the world that no longer did the presence of God dwell in the temple, but the New Testament says the presence of God dwells 00:33:32.880 --> 00:33:33.490 in his people. 00:33:35.160 --> 00:33:36.690 People will die for religious ideology. 00:33:38.740 --> 00:33:40.400 That's not why the disciples gave up their lives. 00:33:42.160 --> 00:33:46.720 That's not why the first century church endured such hardship and give up their life for Christ. 00:33:48.340 --> 00:33:48.660 It was a fact. 00:33:50.520 --> 00:33:56.650 A fact that Luke says, "test the eyewittnesses." A fact that Paul says there were 500 people at one time that saw this. 00:33:59.080 --> 00:34:04.330 When you read beyond just the disciples, you see it continue in church history. 00:34:06.240 --> 00:34:11.040 Church history is so well documented for Christianity, it's unbelievable. 00:34:11.320 --> 00:34:18.600 A parchment, a pounded out piece of weeds that turns in grass that lasts thousands of years is unbelievable, 00:34:18.880 --> 00:34:25.420 but to think we have over 5,000 Greek texts of the New Testament, it's just ridiculous to me to even think that much exists. 00:34:26.300 --> 00:34:33.300 As if God is saying, "listen, there is no way parchment should exist this long, but I'm saying to you, this is how you know the New Testament is valid, because here it 00:34:33.300 --> 00:34:33.460 is. 00:34:33.739 --> 00:34:38.560 Thousands of Greek texts for you to examine you faith to know it hold water. 00:34:38.620 --> 00:34:46.120 Now, when you examine religions if general and you compare that to Scripture, to the Bible, it is unfathomable 00:34:46.120 --> 00:34:50.580 to even think that religions would hold water in comparison to Christianity. 00:34:51.100 --> 00:34:58.680 I don't want to say to undermine religions, but if you're coming towards faith intellectually, you understand that God gave you your mind to understand 00:34:58.680 --> 00:35:00.180 who he is truthfully. 00:35:01.440 --> 00:35:05.740 There are major religions in the world that when you say, on what basis have they established their faith? 00:35:05.980 --> 00:35:10.000 And they have no way to trace back where their ancient creeds even come from. 00:35:10.080 --> 00:35:11.880 But they just say, you just simply do it because. 00:35:14.720 --> 00:35:22.700 Christianity has thousands of Greek textx and not only that, early church fathers dating as early as 500 00:35:22.700 --> 00:35:24.260 A.D. 00:35:24.260 --> 00:35:27.140 are on the scene, writing about faith in Christ. 00:35:27.220 --> 00:35:34.280 Clement of Rome, Ignatius, Irunaious, Polycarp, Issubious who documented tons of church history. 00:35:35.560 --> 00:35:39.320 Tertullian, Ambrose, Augustin. 00:35:40.460 --> 00:35:44.420 The list goes on and on of early church history. 00:35:44.440 --> 00:35:45.480 Hippolytas origin. 00:35:48.120 --> 00:35:55.260 Even in Christianity today, you see skeptics who approach it using their minds like Lee Strobel, who I shared 00:35:55.260 --> 00:35:55.650 in the beginning. 00:35:56.060 --> 00:35:57.610 Chuck Colson, who I just talked about. 00:35:58.120 --> 00:36:05.240 Josh McDowell just wrote some great books called The Coffee House books, and these three little books under 00:36:05.240 --> 00:36:08.260 100 pages on who is Jesus and how do you know the Bible is valid. 00:36:09.480 --> 00:36:09.820 Great reads. 00:36:11.020 --> 00:36:16.660 Even if you go back further in American church history, Simon Greenleaf, the man who started Harvard Law School. 00:36:17.080 --> 00:36:24.360 He was a Jew who was known to be against Christianity and would make fun of law students who came to Harvard Law 00:36:24.360 --> 00:36:26.500 School who believe in Jesus. 00:36:26.620 --> 00:36:33.800 One year, a freshman comes in and says, "Listen as a lawyer, the thing that you teach us in Harvard Law School, is to examine the evidence. 00:36:33.920 --> 00:36:41.260 I just want ask you as you mock my faith, have you ever really examine the faith of Christianity?" Wanting to be a man of his word saying, "examine 00:36:41.260 --> 00:36:46.300 the evidence," Simon Greenleaf goes back and examines Christianity, becomes a believer and writes a book about it. 00:36:47.120 --> 00:36:48.860 The man who starts Harvard Law School. 00:36:52.560 --> 00:36:58.340 This is where Paul is saying, the significance of what Jesus has done for us is important for us to understand. 00:36:59.000 --> 00:37:06.140 So then, he gets to this, verse 8 he says, "Don't let anyone deceive you." Don't undermine the beauty of who 00:37:06.140 --> 00:37:06.880 Christ is. 00:37:07.880 --> 00:37:15.080 So he's going to go on from verse 16, he's going to talk about three religious ways of thinking that undermine who 00:37:15.080 --> 00:37:16.180 Christ is. 00:37:16.180 --> 00:37:18.000 In verses 16-71, I'm going to tell you what it is. 00:37:18.420 --> 00:37:20.080 Verses 16-17 legalism. 00:37:20.780 --> 00:37:22.540 Verses 18-19, mysticism. 00:37:23.540 --> 00:37:25.840 Verses 22-23, asceticism. 00:37:25.840 --> 00:37:27.600 I'll tell you what those are in just a moment. 00:37:30.360 --> 00:37:37.520 Warren Wiersbe, coming to this text, this section, says this, "Anytime a person adds religion, 00:37:38.740 --> 00:37:40.460 he is also judging Jesus Christ. 00:37:41.760 --> 00:37:47.000 He is saying that Christ did not finish the work of salvation on the cross and that he must add something to it. 00:37:48.080 --> 00:37:55.540 He is also saying that Jesus Christ is not sufficient for all the spiritual needs of the Christian." Verses 00:37:55.540 --> 00:38:00.920 16-17, if you want to know when Paul is saying, this is how we get deceived, verses 16-17, now he is going to explain it. 00:38:02.220 --> 00:38:09.320 "Therefore, no one is to act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to festivals or a new moon 00:38:09.320 --> 00:38:16.380 or a Sabbath day things which are a mere shadow of what is to come, but the substance belongs to Jesus." He's saying, listen, 00:38:16.900 --> 00:38:22.640 men will establish these religious ways of thinking and saying, do this, do this, do this and you earn your favor for God and God finds you acceptable. 00:38:23.340 --> 00:38:25.860 Look, it all belongs to Jesus, our substance is in Jesus. 00:38:26.860 --> 00:38:28.520 Verse 18 talking about mysticism. 00:38:28.720 --> 00:38:30.420 This is accknowledging spirits. 00:38:30.500 --> 00:38:35.620 He says, "Let no one keep defrauding you of your prize by delighting in self-abasement and the worship of angels. 00:38:36.540 --> 00:38:43.700 Taking his stand on visions he has inflated without cause by his fleshly mind, and not holding fast to the Head from whom the entire 00:38:43.700 --> 00:38:50.700 body being supplied and held together by the joints and ligaments grows together and him." What he's saying is this, people are coming 00:38:50.700 --> 00:38:55.640 along and they are saying these having spiritual feelings and it's denying what scripture has already declared. 00:38:56.820 --> 00:38:58.600 So Paul is saying, you want to know where that really comes from? 00:38:58.760 --> 00:38:59.300 It's not of God. 00:39:00.520 --> 00:39:07.600 When it comes to you and your feelings and the word of God, God gave his word for a reason and that's for us to examine where we 00:39:07.600 --> 00:39:08.100 are. 00:39:08.340 --> 00:39:10.060 To understand if we were really walking in truth. 00:39:10.720 --> 00:39:17.020 The argument goes like this, let know one keep defrauding you of your prize by delighting in selfabasement and the worship of angels. 00:39:17.460 --> 00:39:25.500 They would have said this: You know Jesus is good and you can include Jesus in our religous thinking, but 00:39:25.600 --> 00:39:26.420 Jesus isn't all. 00:39:27.680 --> 00:39:31.840 He's just a part, or maybe a piece, or he's one of the many roads that you can take. 00:39:32.440 --> 00:39:36.910 Then he goes on further beyond mysticism, which is this idea of angelic worship. 00:39:37.720 --> 00:39:41.370 Legalim is a system of rules, mysticism in a type of angelic worship. 00:39:41.560 --> 00:39:48.600 In verse 20 it says this, talking about asceticism, "If you have died with Christ to the elementery principles of the world, why as if you were living 00:39:48.600 --> 00:39:55.660 in the world, do you not submit to your yourself to decreases such as, do not handle, do not taste, you not touch, which all refer to things destined 00:39:55.660 --> 00:40:02.660 to perish with use, and accordance to the commandments and teachings of men, these are matters which have, to be sure, the appearance of wisdom, self 00:40:02.660 --> 00:40:09.680 made religion, self-abasement, and self treatment of the body, but are of no value against fleshly indulgence." What 00:40:09.680 --> 00:40:13.820 he's sayings is asceticism is like taking legalism to the next step. 00:40:14.720 --> 00:40:21.920 Asceticism is like abusing yourself because you don't find yourself worthy and so by torturing yourself, 00:40:21.980 --> 00:40:25.020 to some degree, in some way, then God will find you acceptable. 00:40:26.300 --> 00:40:32.300 So these religious thinkings are all these systems are trying to avail yourself to God, so that God loves you. 00:40:33.760 --> 00:40:34.760 So that God embraces you. 00:40:36.800 --> 00:40:43.880 But the truth of who Jesus is there is nothing you've done to make God love you less and 00:40:43.920 --> 00:40:45.980 there's nothing you will do to make God love you more. 00:40:48.760 --> 00:40:53.440 God loves you, so much so he sacrificed his life for you. 00:40:54.280 --> 00:40:59.320 Sufficiently, so that you could be what Paul describes in verses 4-7. 00:41:01.280 --> 00:41:07.640 Whether you want to be the hippie on the pilgrimage who is hugging the trees, next to the river that's overflowing, or the military guy, or whatever. 00:41:08.860 --> 00:41:10.830 The architect that builts, whatever. 00:41:12.260 --> 00:41:18.410 The point is that you can just sit in the joy of Jesus and rest in the joy of Jesus. 00:41:20.560 --> 00:41:24.560 Now, when it comes to these ways of religious thinking, I think they are present in our culture today, but let me just share this. 00:41:27.220 --> 00:41:34.660 I don't think our battle is as much legalism, 00:41:34.680 --> 00:41:35.760 mysticism, and asceticism. 00:41:36.440 --> 00:41:38.520 I think those interference into our lives religiously. 00:41:39.700 --> 00:41:41.710 But I think we're even a step below that now culturally. 00:41:42.580 --> 00:41:45.420 If this was the 1950's, I would probably talk more about legalism. 00:41:45.420 --> 00:41:48.320 But here's where I think our battle starts, before we even get to legalism. 00:41:50.060 --> 00:41:51.520 I think our battle is really with moralism. 00:41:53.680 --> 00:41:56.850 And the reason is because we haven't been taught to think theologically. 00:41:58.960 --> 00:42:05.560 We have facts to establish everything in life, but when it comes to faith, we don't know how to think through things theological. 00:42:06.040 --> 00:42:10.780 So we used the word "faith" like it's sort of this Russian Roulette guessing game. 00:42:12.040 --> 00:42:19.220 The way that we use this game is we use our own value system of moralism, apart from God, to determine if 00:42:19.220 --> 00:42:20.370 a religion is valid. 00:42:21.720 --> 00:42:28.720 So the thinking will go like this, moralism makes religion correct and since we can find a hint of moralism in ever religion, 00:42:29.080 --> 00:42:30.560 then they are all right. 00:42:31.390 --> 00:42:37.160 If we believe moralism it is the way, we say things like, if it seems moral, it must be true. 00:42:37.180 --> 00:42:38.680 If it's good, it must be true. 00:42:38.780 --> 00:42:41.840 And that's the way we think moralistically as it relates to religion. 00:42:42.600 --> 00:42:50.020 What we don't realize is in that statement, although we're saying moralism is a good thing, and I definitely want us to live holy, good lifes, we 00:42:50.020 --> 00:42:52.640 use moralism to gauge what is true and what isn't true. 00:42:52.940 --> 00:42:55.720 There is profound danger in that. 00:42:56.800 --> 00:42:57.870 Let me just give you an example. 00:42:58.240 --> 00:43:01.190 I heard this news this week and thought it fit perfectly for us. 00:43:01.790 --> 00:43:05.450 I'm going to talk bad about something for a second, but just hear me out. 00:43:05.840 --> 00:43:09.900 Because if we can't think through this, we've got some serious issues to address in our life. 00:43:10.180 --> 00:43:11.360 And this is why I want to bring this up. 00:43:11.980 --> 00:43:14.440 There is that an individual running for office right now. 00:43:15.540 --> 00:43:22.860 He is a US Marine Sergeant named Steve Hill — I don't know what you're thinking I was going to say there — but he is a sergeant named Steve Hill. 00:43:23.700 --> 00:43:30.700 He is the Satanic Temple's first political candidate, who is openly acknowledged an affiliation 00:43:30.700 --> 00:43:31.200 with this Temple. 00:43:31.980 --> 00:43:38.720 He's running as a Democrat for the senate in California, if you're part of D21. 00:43:40.060 --> 00:43:47.160 So I'm listening to this on NPR radio this weekend and even though it starts off he's 00:43:47.160 --> 00:43:54.620 satanic, then they give this appeal in the end, so that you're not afraid of the fact that he's offering up his services as 00:43:54.620 --> 00:43:59.760 a governmental leader representing the Satanic Temple, he says this, "Don't worry. 00:44:00.180 --> 00:44:03.900 Our mission statement at the Satanic Temple is this," I looked it up online and got the quote directly. 00:44:04.620 --> 00:44:11.800 "It's to encourage the benevolence and empathy among all people." And since moralism determines what's 00:44:11.800 --> 00:44:13.860 truth, that doesn't sound bad, right? 00:44:14.180 --> 00:44:18.690 To encourage the benevolence and empathy among all people, that's pretty good. 00:44:19.260 --> 00:44:21.400 So he's got validity there. 00:44:21.880 --> 00:44:27.060 So we present that and we allow that because, it's okay. 00:44:30.240 --> 00:44:34.660 When we make moralism the point, here comes the problem. 00:44:34.840 --> 00:44:35.340 This is where it starts. 00:44:36.640 --> 00:44:39.300 When you say, as long as it's good, it doesn't really matter what you're worshipping. 00:44:39.500 --> 00:44:40.320 as long as it's good. 00:44:40.320 --> 00:44:41.140 This is what we've already done. 00:44:42.200 --> 00:44:47.580 We've said moralism is of greater value than the God who defines the moralism. 00:44:48.720 --> 00:44:55.020 Doesn't matter, as long as what you do is good, moralism and then God below that, really serves moralism. 00:44:55.020 --> 00:45:00.580 But we know the point of anything good in this life is determined by the one who created it all. 00:45:01.060 --> 00:45:08.030 So we've already got the system in reverse by saying, moralism and it doesn't matter what God says as long as there is moralism. 00:45:09.240 --> 00:45:12.160 It's already in reverse by acknowledging we're okay with moralism. 00:45:14.200 --> 00:45:19.740 But here's the thing gets scary, and this is maybe where I might concern you a little bit in thinking through this. 00:45:21.220 --> 00:45:27.620 If moralism, if we live under the thought of moralism, this is the way we tend to think, if we believe in spiritual forces in this world. 00:45:28.320 --> 00:45:33.320 We tend to think that what the spiritual forces are after, or what Satan's really after, is the bad guys. 00:45:34.300 --> 00:45:35.340 Those are the ones that belong to him. 00:45:35.340 --> 00:45:40.980 It's the bad guys, it's the murderers, it's the prostitutes, it's the drug dealers. 00:45:41.230 --> 00:45:42.860 Satan's after the bad guys, right? 00:45:46.080 --> 00:45:53.100 The question I just ask is, if you believe that what he's really after is the bad guys, 00:45:56.060 --> 00:45:58.370 why would Satan go after what he already owns? 00:46:04.320 --> 00:46:10.100 If you get into a gun fight, the first person you attack isn't the unarmed man. 00:46:13.220 --> 00:46:18.630 The thing you want to bring down, is the one that holds it all together. 00:46:22.360 --> 00:46:24.010 Satan isn't after what he already owns. 00:46:26.920 --> 00:46:31.700 Spiritual forces are real, Satan isn't going to attack what belongs to him. 00:46:36.160 --> 00:46:39.790 In Christianity the weapon is Jesus. 00:46:42.460 --> 00:46:50.060 I honestly mean this and I want to encourage care for another in the world, love for one another in this world, but I 00:46:50.060 --> 00:46:56.140 honestly believe this: moralism is Satan's facade to distract you from the truth of Jesus. 00:47:00.700 --> 00:47:01.340 That is Pauls's argument. 00:47:03.500 --> 00:47:05.680 He doesn't use moralism here, but he points to Christ. 00:47:06.220 --> 00:47:09.800 Let me close with this illustration. 00:47:12.880 --> 00:47:19.920 The first two chapters of Colossians cannot emphasize the significance of Jesus enough. 00:47:22.740 --> 00:47:23.740 The way Jesus loves you. 00:47:25.220 --> 00:47:27.240 The way Jesus has given his life for you. 00:47:28.160 --> 00:47:30.090 The way Jesus has created all things. 00:47:30.800 --> 00:47:32.500 The way Jesus is God come in the flesh. 00:47:32.540 --> 00:47:34.780 We cannot emphasize that enough. 00:47:36.360 --> 00:47:37.160 I heard the story of a man. 00:47:39.480 --> 00:47:40.900 His name was Hernán Cortés. 00:47:42.640 --> 00:47:48.840 In the 1500's, he want to the Yucatan Peninsula, which was Central Mexico. 00:47:49.540 --> 00:47:54.500 He brought just over five hundred men, 10 ships, into that area to fight the Aztecs. 00:47:55.880 --> 00:47:59.120 The Aztecs were known to have this unbelievable treasure. 00:47:59.780 --> 00:48:03.280 People groups have come against them to fight them and to no avail. 00:48:03.440 --> 00:48:04.120 No one was victorious. 00:48:04.660 --> 00:48:07.870 This empire is estimated to be as high as 15 million people at this point. 00:48:08.900 --> 00:48:15.980 He comes into this area, and I'm not saying this is a good thing, but he comes into this area in 1519, with 10 ships and little 00:48:15.980 --> 00:48:23.120 over five hundred men, and these men defeat a people group of 15 million 00:48:23.120 --> 00:48:25.490 and seize this treasure. 00:48:28.640 --> 00:48:30.220 No one have been victorious to this point. 00:48:30.740 --> 00:48:32.080 These individuals come in and are victorious. 00:48:33.320 --> 00:48:34.520 Let me just share how. 00:48:37.040 --> 00:48:44.060 When they got off the ship, Hernán Cortés ordered some of his men 00:48:44.060 --> 00:48:46.900 to go back to the boats and burn the ships. 00:48:48.400 --> 00:48:52.540 That when the army look behind them, there was nowhere else to go. 00:48:54.680 --> 00:49:00.770 If there are spiritual forces at work in this world, what they want to present to you is the facade of ships. 00:49:02.920 --> 00:49:08.760 Our heart holds onto ships, not wanting to completely embrace the beautiful of who Christ is. 00:49:10.560 --> 00:49:15.780 Paul, in this passage encourages you of anyone, believer in Christ, hold to Jesus. 00:49:17.460 --> 00:49:21.080 He is the way, he is the truth, he is the life.